EVE General Discussion

Know how I'd "fix" this whole hyperdunking thing? Remove most of the hull buffer, give them slightly bigger armor/shield buffers, change lows to rigs, compensate the base cargo capacities to be the same as they are today, and give them a 10% or maybe even 12.5% resist bonus per level to armor/shields, depending on race. They'd have the exact same cargo/EHP capability/tradeoffs they do today, with an extra something that encourages group play. Then whenever a freighter dies to this tactic, a second subscription automatically gets charged to the victim's account for a single month. See where I'm going with this?

Sounds pretty fair to me.

So you are saying CCP has been doing it wrong from patch 1 ?

While there are "spite" ganks (empty freighter), they're pretty rare. I guarantee that you'll be pretty safe, even if AFK, if you simply tank the ship and not carry more than somewhere between a billion and two billion ISK worth of stuff.

Ok, so let me tell you why you are wrong on this:

"avoid him" So a freighter pilot can avoid going to Jita if they have stuff that needs to go to Jita, yeah, need to avoid the gankers even when the gankers are in the choke point of your route or in both your start and end locations... no.

"shoot him" And that would accomplish what exactly? It would blow up his catalyst a little sooner, so he would just use another and another and another, or he would start shooting you instead of the victim while the whole time keeping the victim bumped and unable to warp. Or worst case he would just bat phone his gank buddies and they would facemelt your do good ship with a few dozen catas then finish what they started with their original victim.

"jam him" This is only really partially effective in the cases where they are using not sebo'd thrashers, as a sebo'd thrasher will actually be allowed to start locking its target before the server tells the rest of the players that they are allowed to start locking him, therefore getting his volley off. In the cases it is not a thrasher, jams aren't 100%, and all they need is one missed jam and your fragile little jam ship gets blown up and they continue without your minor annoyance.

"warp away" Yeah, cause that always works for people being bumped. Bumping is an art, it can be hard to do if you aren't good at it, but if you are really good then its not really any trouble to keep the guy bumped. Even if you warped away they would see where you warped to and most likely land before you did.

"steal their ships" My guess is you don't realize the full potential safety of this yet, which I tried to explain above that people aren't fully utilizing this 'feature'. If you did it correctly you would never put a ship in space at all, the ganker just boards straight out of a bowhead/orca for the catas and shuttles.

Also to the mention of being completely safe if doing everything 200% correctly (and yes, I know, I routinely haul double digit billions in my freighter all the time, into/out of Jita, down the Niarja corridor etc). Since a cargo scan will complete whether or not the ship is still on grid by the time the scan finishes cycling, all they have to do is beat a non-sebo'd webbing frig with a sebo'd scan frig. At that point they know what you have.

Then they 2 options available:
1) use a sebo'd tackle frig to stop your warp before your web frig can get the lock, and suddenly you have time to get a bump in, with maybe another suicide noob tackle ship to give you a little extra time. Victim caught, proceed with normal gank via dozen pilots or single pilot hyperdunk.
2) use a sebo'd headshot nado gang, they will out-target a non sebo'd web frig every time, and to be extra sure you just use a sebo'd tackle frig to kill the initial warp for those first few seconds.

This is further worsened by staging the gank on a region gate, as the extreme distance that can be between the friendly web and the intended freighter if he can't hold cloak long enough to get in range.

BACK ON TOPIC: (not sure why the moderators seriously let any thread like this turn into back and forth about the hardships or lack thereof of ganking and all these gankers saying its too hard and complaining the carebears what CCP to hold their hands)

Someone mentioned bumping a gank victim and it being hard to keep dropping fresh catas close to the target. Again, you are thinking about Hyperdunking when not being used to its full potential. A bowhead can get up near 300m/s which is more than fast enough to keep up with a bumped freighter. The criminal just warps his pod to the bowhead and boards out of the maint bay each time, problem solved.

By saying this I know you have not tried this. I just again confirmed on sisi that it is for the entirety of your 15 minute criminal timer. For it to be only while you were shooting something makes no sense, as you can't change ships while shooting something and having a weapons timer.

Why shouldn't autopiloted ships be easy to gank?

Come to that why shouldn't a defenceless unescorted large cargo vessel be easy to gank. In the real world, it doesn't even take a Destroyer to do that; 5 Somalian fishermen with hand guns and an RPG-7 or two often manage it pretty handily.

Have you considered hauling such small loads in a faster or more defensible ship? You seem to be under the impression that a solo freighter outght to be safe, but I can't for the life of me think why you'd have that idea.

The Deep Space Transports got a very considerable tanking boost lately IIRC.

I would not actually fly a deepspace transport that many jumps while active either.

Yes, avoid him. The gank will not happen in Jita or any of the surrounding system, at least not with this tactic. There are only a handful of systems that you probably have to go through and those are the ones you need to keep an eye on and spot the right moment to go through (or just use other means to skip). No target = no attack = you win.

Yes, shoot him. That would immediately accomplish him not being on the field killing you, and it rapidly eats up his cache of ships which will soon mean the kill becomes impossible. More importantly, it makes you a hard target. Given the already very narrow set of circumstances under which ganks will work to begin with, anything that risks pushing the target outside of that niche will mean it's not worth the gankers' time and effort. Mission kill = you win.

Yes, jam him. This is almost exactly the same thing as shooting him, with the main difference that it's hellalot more effective. He has ~20s to get as much damage in as possible. A jam lasts… (drumroll)… 20 seconds, and against something as tiny as a destroyer, you are pretty much guaranteed to succeed. Cache reduced; he's gone from the field; mission kill = you win.

Yes, warp away. The killing spot is in one place — where the gank ships are being dumped into space. If you are no longer at that spot, he can't re-ship and keep killing you. So chasing you down is not an option — look at the warp speed of Bowheads and Orcas. Bumping does not keep you from warping, it just puts at waaaaaaay above the speed threshold in a new direction. Warping off in that direction happens instantly. Can't follow = mission kill = you win.

Yes, steal his ships. You have apparently not realise this yet, but he needs two sets: one at the killing spot, one at a safe spot. Steal from either, and he no longer has anything to fly and/or kite CONCORD with. Can't attack = mission kill = you win.

Case closed. Like everyone else, you know full well that even though employing all the above strategies works perfectly, doing so is utterly unnecessary because there's pretty much nothing to avoid.

We never left the topic. The topic was, is, and remains how this status quo doesn't change of anything, and how some people apparently don't get this redundancy. It is still a woefully useless tactic against any kind of aware target; it is still far less effective, far more cumbersome, and far more risky than a regular gank; and it is still far easier to counter in any of the myriad ways explained to you by both gankers and freighter pilots.

True enough. If it were, ganking would be hell of a lot easier.

To haul bulk cargo.

Just having people along makes it a lot less boring; if they're actively scanning for threats, then that reduces the boredom by a significant amount too.

It is boring if you make it boring, so choose not to.

So basically you are just not willing to actually play the game.

Why do you feel that you are entitled to have your stuff move around New Eden in 100% safety while you are not at your keyboard? Allowing that would be much worse game design than allowing this difficult-to-execute and easily avoidable ganking attack.